Fuss and Feathers (Olivia and Cassie)

Episode 0: Fuss and Feathers
Summary: Running someone over is a poor start for a working relationship.
Character Sheet: http://pastebin.com/pFMktA4n

~~~

Olivia had been a magical girl for a while, and a pretty good one at that. Sure, things got messy sometimes, but it hadn't been that bad once she'd gotten used to it.  She had a spirit patron, a working relationship with some of the other girls in and out of the Overcity, and a reputation for getting the job done. Life was, if not good, then at least tolerable. Then she'd gotten sloppy one night while hunting down some zombies in the middle of nowhere and ended up splattered across the hood of a car. Such was the life of a magical girl.

~~~

Cassie hadn't expected to ever end up as a teenage girl. Or to lose her identity and a third of her age, among other things. At least her neck didn't hurt from the crash anymore. After Puuchu'd vanished into thin air with a too-cheery farewell, she'd taken a step away from her totaled car...and promptly thrown up at the sight of the magical girl's mangled body crushed between the car and a tree. She'd still been staring at it numbly when something large and feathery fluttered onto a nearby branch.

It was an owl. A fairly large and fluffy-looking one at that. And it seemed to be glaring at her.

"..."
"..."

~~~

Olivia had been through a LOT of shit over her career, but this took the cake. This idiot had run her over- which had hurt, a lot, not to mention gotten her KILLED- been given HER job when that little bastard Puuchu had shown up, and now the newly minted magical girl was just standing there like nothing'd happened. Olivia couldn't change back (the first thing she'd tried), she couldn't use her magic, and she was an owl now for some reason. An owl that'd just gotten a good look at her own dead body. And now the idiot who'd gotten her killed in the first place was gaping at her like SHE was the strangest thing she'd seen all night.

Olivia was a lot of things, but patient and even-tempered weren't two of them. Especially when she was doing an unwilling impersonation of a feather duster.

Letting out an angry screech, she swooped at the newbie's face, talons-first. The girl yelped and ducked, and the claws that'd been meant to rake her face got caught in her hair instead.

Instead of an angry owl clawing her face off, the girl now had an angry, entangled owl for a hat.

Olivia was furious enough that she could barely fly straight, even acting more or less on instinct. And now she'd managed to get herself trapped in this idiot's HAIR of all things because she hadn't stopped to think. Frantic to break free, she flapped her wings wildly and was rewarded with yells of pain from the idiot as she buffeted her head and hands with her wings. The night was filled with high-pitched yells and hoots. Then her new, extremely sensitive ears heard something else entirely.

Moaning. The crash of footsteps in the undergrowth. It was some of the zombies she'd been trying to track down and dispose of. And she didn't have her magic right now, or even hands.

This wasn't good.

~~~

Cassie wasn't sure why the crazy owl wasn't trying to kill her anymore- only that her face and hands felt like they'd been sandpapered, and it felt like it'd torn a strip off her scalp. She was sure that between the car crash, what the "Puuchu"'d done, and now the killer owl...things couldn't get much worse.

Then the first zombie lurched into view with half its jaw missing, stinking of bog-water and rot, and Cassie realized that yes, they could.

"...Oh god."

She froze.

~~~

Why was the idiot just STANDING there? Olivia paused long enough to think as she struggled to pull herself free. Between her talons, tangled hair, and the embroidered hairband Puuchu'd given the newbie's costume for some reason, pulling free was proving tricky. Especially since she wasn't used to actually having claws for feet. Olivia tugged harder, which got a yell of pain from the girl but not much else. At least it got her moving.

Olivia really didn't want to die here. Again.

~~~

Zombies were a lot less fun in person than on TV. And a lot more terrifying. It was a lumbering mass of rotting flesh and swamp mud in the shape of a person, taller than she was...and its jaw was snapping open and shut, showing strangely white teeth. It was the white teeth that she remembered the most clearly afterwards. That, and the sheer terror.

A jolt of pain on her head, and Cassie cringed away in response just as the zombie tried to grab her. That snapped her out of her fugue, and she stumbled backwards blindly, still staring in blind terror.

Zombies weren't supposed to exist, let alone try and eat people. But she wasn't supposed to be a magical girl alone in the woods either.

"Oh god. Oh god, it's going to eat my face..." someone was babbling in incoherent terror. Cassie kept stumbling away, and realized it was her. She stepped on something that slid from underfoot and nearly tripped as she blindly backpedaled away from the monster. Two more figures lurched out of the dark.

Cassie'd never thought she'd die as a magical girl being eaten by zombies. No part of any of that should have been possible.

Another tug on her hair, and a weight suddenly vanished from her head as the owl finally pulled free and took off.

"Hey! N-now you're leaving?!" Cassie yelled at the vanishing owl, her voice rising in panic.

~~~

Olivia finally managed to untangle her feet from the rookie's head while she kept backpedaling. Without a second thought, she took off. The zombies weren't her problem anymore. Finding a way to fix this was. Even a rookie should figure out how to deal with them soon enough, if they weren't a total moron.

She could still hear the zombies as she flapped her wings. Sounded like there were a lot of them. Olivia stopped flapping her wings and landed on a nearby branch, listening for signs of a fight. There weren't any. There were, however, plenty of panicked footsteps.

...This rookie was a total moron.

Reluctantly, Olivia flew back to try and save the idiot who'd gotten her killed.

~~~

Cassie was running for her life, tripping over branches and her own skirt and her long braid whipping about behind her. She had no clue where she was going, just that she was going to be lunch if she waited around for the growing mob of zombies three steps behind her. She'd never been much of a sprinter before, but it turned out being on the menu- and whatever else Puuchu'd done beyond the obvious- was a great motivator to start.

She vaulted over a log, almost slammed face-first into a tree trunk, and did fall face-first into a mud patch. Spluttering and spitting out mud, she scrambled up and kept running, not caring where she was going just as long as she put as much distance between herself and those zombies as possible.

That was when she ran into the rest of the horde.

There were a dozen of them, some of them more mud and glowing ooze than corpse by now. Bones poked out from rags and rotting flesh, and empty eye sockets stared blindly as their owners lurched towards the magical girl just feet away.

Cassie skidded to a stop. Only one thought was going through her mind, over and over.

"Why? Why me?" she groaned, and then the horde was on her.

~~~

The rookie was trying to run away AGAIN. Olivia was starting to think she didn't even know she HAD a weapon. The idea of just leaving her to get eaten was looking more and more appealing. Instead, she swooped down at the zombie mob with a screech, hitting the lead zombie's head like a small, feathery comet and bowling the clumsy thing over. The horde came to a stumbling, uncertain halt as she darted between the bodies, some of them sluggishly trying to reach up and grab her and the others stumbling into one another.

And the idiot STILL hadn't caught on yet. Olivia swore to herself as she juked and weaved between outstretched arms, then fluttered up to a safety of a branch.  If the idiot wasted the chance Olivia'd risked her (second) life to give her, she was going to be sorely tempted to claw her eyes out and save the zombies the trouble.

~~~

That owl'd saved her neck by swooping out of nowhere, but the zombies were still stumbling closer and closer. Hollow, soulless moans echoed from behind Cassie, and she saw the first group running at her as fast as they could on rotting legs.

She was going to be zombie chow.

At this point, Cassie had passed the stage of blind panic. She felt strangely calm, almost detached from her own imminent messy death. She was going to die here in a stranger's body and wearing a frilly dress, and she couldn't think of anything to do to change that. She could try fighting back...but she'd never been any good in a fistfight and even ignoring all those teeth...there were a DOZEN of them. She couldn't run. The owl couldn't save her. She didn't want to just die, but she didn't have any way to change that. She needed a way to stay alive, to fight them off. She needed a miracle.

There was a soft chiming noise, and Cassie felt a weight appear in her hand. A handle. Something had just appeared in her hand and she really, really didn't care that it was impossible because anything was better than trying to punch out the zombie lunging right at her.

She swung blindly, and that was when she noticed she was trying to fight off a zombie with a bell.

...She was still going to be zombie chow.

The bell hit the zombie's skull. The initial muffled clunk of silver on worn bone was drowned out by a high, clear note that rung through the forest and kept echoing, impossibly loud yet somehow not deafening.

The horde stopped in their tracks, shrieking as one. One or two of them collapsed into piles of bones and clothing, and most of the others were wavering unsteadily and dripping mud. Some kind of glowing slime was leaking from their bodies. They seemed uncertain, suddenly. Afraid.

Cassie looked at the bell incredulously then started ringing it like her life depended on it.

If she'd looked up, she'd have noticed the owl suddenly looked remarkably exasperated, but also relieved.

By the third note, the last zombie had slumped to the ground. Cassie kept swinging the bell around until her arm was tired, just to make sure. She let her arm drop limply to her side, eyeing what was left of the zombies warily.

Most of them had melted away to bones and sludge, but a few were still recognizable as people. One might have once been a hiker, but it was hard to tell what he'd looked like before his face had been chewed off. Right then and there, Cassie was just glad he wasn't getting back up. She let out a relieved sigh and collapsed against the nearest tree.

"That...I don't even...A bell?" she stammered to herself as the shock started to wear off and events caught up to her. She had no idea where she was, or what was going on. She was alive. Now she just had to deal with everything else. She slumped.

"Why is all this happening to me?" she groaned.

There was a hoot from above her. Cassie looked up. The owl was there again, sitting on a branch like nothing'd happened.

Was it her imagination or was it glaring at her again?

"Um...Hey again." she said, ignoring the fact she was talking to an owl. Under the circumstances, she felt she'd earned it. "I...I guess I owe you one."

A pause, then another hoot that somehow managed to sound derisive and affirmative at the same time. Cassie blinked. Was that a reply? From the owl? It'd saved her just now and attacked those zombies. That didn't seem like an accident.

"Wait, can you understand me?" she blurted, eyes going wide as an impossible thought struck her. Considering everything that'd happened tonight, though... "Hoot twice if you do." She added.

There was a moment of silence.

Hoot. Hoot. Cassie blinked.

"...What. How...how's that possible? How's any of this possible?"

The owl stared at her, then abruptly fluttered down from the branch and onto her shoulder. Cassie tried not to flinch from the proximity, or the sudden weight, or the talons digging into her shoulder. She mostly succeeded.

"Okay..." she stared to say, then felt a sharp, stinging jab on her ear. She jolted upright.

"Ow!" she yelped, half-standing and clutching her ear as the owl fluttered onto the ground.

It'd pecked her.

"What was that for?" she demanded, the pain helping her overlook that she was having a one-sided conversation with a bird.

She'd never seen an owl shrug before, but the way it flapped its wings couldn't be mistaken for anything else.

"Right. Thanks a lot. That really helped." Cassie snapped. "Because what I really needed on top of all this shit," she gestured at herself, "was getting bitten by an owl."

The next hoot was definitely less than sympathetic.

"I don't get it. How are you doing that? What...why'd that thing..." Cassie mumbled numbly as events overwhelmed her again. She couldn't go home like this. She was supposed to just be borrowing the car while visiting for the holidays, not ending up as a magical girl after running someone over. They wouldn't believe her. They wouldn't even believe who she was, not when she looked like this and couldn't even say her own name. She'd be lucky to make it through the front door.

The owl'd started to flutter away while she was distracted, then stopped. It looked back at her, impatiently.

"You...you want me to follow you, huh?"

Hoot. Hoot.

"...Alright then."

Cassie stumbled along after the owl, head spinning as she tried to make sense of things. It wasn't working.

The car was still where she'd left it, with the front end looking like a crumpled up tin can. It wasn't going anywhere. The girl's body...was still there too. She wasn't going anywhere either.

A zombie wearing a hoodie was facing the other way. Two rings of her bell, and it collapsed facedown. Cassie gave it a wide berth anyway as she walked over to the car. Up close, the smell of blood and engine oil and vomit was overwhelming.  Cassie didn't want to look at the scene for long...but the owl'd led her back here. Why?

The owl landed on the hood, and hooted urgently, leaning forwards as though to gesture at the corpse. It leaned forward, gingerly, lowering its beak to point at the body, then looking up and repeating the gesture. Cassie stared in mute incomprehension for a moment, then winced as she slowly put the pieces together. The girl she'd run over- murdered- had apparently been a magical girl, impossible as that was. The owl clearly wasn't normal. It all made sense now.

"You...you were her pet, weren't you?" She asked quietly.

There was a moment of silence as the owl visibly twitched. Then it screeched, so loudly that Cassie cringed slightly, half-expecting it to attack her again. It glared at her, then carefully shook its head left and right, slowly to make sure she didn't miss it.

"Okay. Right. Sorry...You're not her pet." Cassie looked between the body and the owl. "You're connected to...her, though. Right? So..."

A single hoot. It jerked its head towards the body again.

"Okay...But if you're hers...not her pet then..."

The owl repeated the gesture. It was pointing at the body, again and again.

Dead silence.

"...Oh." Cassie swallowed, looking up. "You're...you're HER?!" She gasped, feeling like the rug'd been pulled out from under her. "B-but I...I hit you and...you..."

The owl flapped her wings once, sardonically, as though to say 'here I am'.

"...Um. Ah." Cassie took an unsteady step backwards, torn between guilt, shock, and more than a little relief. At least if she'd killed someone, it hadn't stuck completely. Kind of. A nervous laugh escaped her lips. "Well...Um...Sorry about that?" she tried.

Much, much later, she'd admit she'd deserved to get clawed for that.